Winterhalter was born in the Black Forest where he was encouraged to draw at school. In 1818 he went to Freiburg to study under Karl Ludwig Schüler and then moved to Munich in 1823, where he attended the Academy and studied under Josef Stieler, a fashionable portrait painter. Winterhalter was first brought to the attention of Queen Victoria by the Queen of the Belgians and subsequently painted numerous portraits at the English court from 1842 till his death.

Princess Feodora was Queen Victoria's niece, the youngest child of the Queen's half-sister, also Feodora. She was her mother's favourite child – pretty, 'a fine girl – immensely tall'. In 1858 she married, as his second wife, George II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. Queen Victoria recorded in her Journal that Winterhalter had begun 'a pretty little picture of Feo, as a pendant to Ada's' (RCIN405002).
Signed and dated: Fr Winterhalter / 1855. Inscribed on the back with the names of the sitter and artist and the date, June 1855.